Words
Get it Together
Just there after, the lights dim down to a nearly indiscriminate fade.The hush falls on the crowd like a falling line of dominos.It’s the...
I am always asleep, always dreaming
promise: I lost the meaning of the wordwhile begging & beggingfor it to be solid
my teeth reach into hope to sinkbiting into air that...
While Your Parents Danced
in the next room, their heels
skimming over dark oak
to Sinatra and Como and Bennett
crooning from the dusty stereo,
we lay in your small bed, sheets
thrown...
passing laments on the highway of the blessed
lamentations and lust and sometimes we just fight making love for a moment and it doesn’t feel right these children a’ crying these dogs that don’t bark superstition and faith holding...
Bring an Original Poem to Class
Scary things, scary things
The things that have created me
All come back, so haunting
Surrounded now, I can not breathe.
Can someone please
Soon help me
Rid my life...
My life as a ditch
I am a ditch. I live in the ground. When the water flows
through me it washes along my sides with a familiar
tingling that I...
open book (start on page one, or anywhere?)
some days — if by days you mean libraries (i’m my own library) —i file myself under fiction;some days, anthologies
during regular library business hoursi read myselfas a...
A Body Built of Folk and Lore
Deep in the hills and between the streams.
Where fables are passed and the willows weep.
Where wind flows through the tree tops.
And the children grow...
Decadence Outside Dior’s
I walked down the avenue of obscenity,
of unspeakable wealth,
store window displays glazed
with million-dollar baubles
for women waltzing by
in shoes of gold,
bandaged faces newly
contoured by plastic...
Thanksgiving
When we arrived in this unknown placewe knit together in a waythat made me want to shoutthis, this is my family.How could you know...
Self-Deceit #3
I know that room inside youwhere you go to hide when you’re scared and don’t want to be seen. Where your back is turned away, eyes lowered if they’re...
‘Hope and the Odds Make Poor Bedfellows,’ JL
The celebration in Wuhan is a galaxy of lights.The temporary hospitals are torn down, the mallsare reopened. A man fixes his daughter’s maskby a...